WASHINGTON (ABP) – President Obama told a National Prayer Breakfast gathering Feb. 3 that his Christian faith has deepened during his first two years in office.
“The presidency has a funny way of making a person feel the need to pray,” Obama said to laughter at the traditional prayer breakfast that dates to the days of President Eisenhower. “ Abe Lincoln said, as many of you know, ‘I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go.’”
Obama, whose relationship with his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, became an issue during his campaign, said he did not grow up in a particularly religious family.
“My father, who I barely knew — I only met once for a month in my entire life — was said to be a non-believer throughout his life,” he said.
“My mother, whose parents were Baptist and Methodist, grew up with a certain skepticism about organized religion, and she usually only took me to church on Easter and Christmas — sometimes,” he said.
Despite that, Obama described his mother as ”one of the most spiritual people that I ever knew.” Her “instinctive” following of the Golden Rule and Midwestern values, he said, fostered in him a sense of the dignity of all people and the imperative of living an ethical life.
Obama said Baptist leaders in the Civil Rights Movement including Martin Luther King Jr. helped inspire him to become involved as a community organizer for a group of churches on the Southside of Chicago.
“And it was through that experience working with pastors and laypeople trying to heal the wounds of hurting neighborhoods that I came to know Jesus Christ for myself and embrace Him as my Lord and Savior,” Obama said.
Polls indicate that between one fifth and one fourth of Americans wrongly believe that Obama is a Muslim, and the number appears to be growing. The president told the prayer gathering that when he and his wife hear their faith questioned, “We are reminded that ultimately what matters is not what other people say about us, but whether we're being true to our conscience and true to our God.”
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
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